


Playing Softly on the Radio

by Mhalachai



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-07
Updated: 2009-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14562156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: Sometimes, John thinks he can still smell the blood.





	Playing Softly on the Radio

**Author's Note:**

> Note that this story references child abuse and the murder of an adult - some grisly details includes. Proceed with caution.

John's memory may be patchy on most of his childhood, but a few things still stand out. Falling off the stable roof and breaking his arm when he was very small. His friend Billy's birthday party and the bright blue icing on the cake. When his parents brought his brother Dave home from the hospital for the first time, and how wrinkly and pink and screamy Dave was.

His mother's death.

For weeks after Mommy came home with the new baby, she'd been tired and grumpy. She didn't want to see John's artwork from school, or read with him, or even to see him at all. She screamed at him when he was too loud and she wouldn't let him anywhere near the baby, even though John knew he was big enough to hold Dave for just a few minutes. After all, he was nearly five.

The one time John tried to pick Dave up out of his bassinet, Mommy caught him and slapped him across the face so hard he cried out in pain. Just as quickly, she pulled him to her chest and hugged him so tight he couldn't breath, then shook him by the shoulders until he broke away and ran down the hall and down the stairs and across the yard to hide in the stables until Daddy came home.

John didn't know what happened to his mommy, but he missed the way things used to be.

On the day it happened, he was late leaving school. His teacher took the kindergarten class outside to look at the bugs in the field, and John had been so excited when he found an earthworm that he'd tripped into the mud and gotten his uniform dirty. His teacher had helped John clean up as best he could, but nothing could mask the muddy marks on his trousers and his shirt. Mrs. Murphy the housekeeper came to pick John up at school, rolling her eyes at his muddy clothes, but that was okay because she liked John and let him lick the spoon whenever she made cookies. John told her all about the worm he'd found and the ladybug that Suzie held on her pinky and the bumblebee that Eric hadn't been able to catch, no matter how hard he tried. He didn't tell her that he had made Dave a picture of the worm and had hidden it in his bag so Mommy wouldn't find it and tear it up like she had done the picture of the horses John had drawn for Dave the previous week.

When they got home, Mrs. Murphy took John to his room and helped him change into clean clothing. Mrs. Murphy took John's uniform to the laundry room and John climbed the stairs to Mommy's room, because even if Mommy didn't want to see him any other time of the day, she always demanded that John come see her when he got home from school.

One day, John thought hotly, he wouldn't come home from school at all and then Mommy would miss him, and on that day he wouldn't be sad, not even a little.

As John approached the room, he could hear Dave crying through the door. His footsteps slowed. Whenever Dave cried, Mommy tried to blame it on John, even when John hasn't around. But by now, John knew there was no point in trying to delay whatever Mommy would do. Slowly, he pushed on the door until it opened.

The room smelled like copper pennies in the sun. Mommy lay still on the bed, one hand extended as she stared up at the ceiling, not even blinking. Red liquid covered the bed all around her, and the wall beside the bed, and Dave's bassinet and the white carpet and the drapes and everything, even the handgun lying on the table on the other side of the room.

John touched Mommy's hand, but she didn't move. Her skin was cold under his fingers. Then John went over to Dave's bassinet. Thick red drops covered his brother's face and his hands and his little yellow pajamas, smearing around as Dave wiggled and cried because he was only a little baby.

John looked at Mommy, then at Dave, then back at Mommy again. She hadn't moved from the place on the bed, and John didn't know how she could be sleeping with her eyes open.

Dave sounded so unhappy that John couldn't stand it any longer. He reached into the bassinet and picked Dave up, careful to hold his head like Daddy always did, until Dave was draped over John's shoulder. There were drops of red all over the bassinet, over the pillow and the mattress. Maybe Dave didn't like being wet, John thought as he walked back across the room holding Dave.

Mommy didn't move.

Out in the hall, Dave stopped crying. "I'll keep you safe," John said to his little brother, who gripped and clung to him like a baby monkey. "That's what big brothers do, Daddy says."

John walked carefully down the stairs, holding Dave tight the whole time. He walked into the kitchen and stopped by the table where Mrs. Murphy and the chauffer looked up, startled at his entrance, and announced, "Something's wrong with Mommy."

Mrs. Murphy shrieked and grabbed Dave away from John, while the chauffer ran out of the kitchen towards Mommy's room, and more people came in at the screaming, and John couldn't find anyone to listen to him that Dave didn't like being wet.

After a few minutes, when Mrs. Murphy had stripped Dave down to his diaper and looked him all over and rewrapped him in a kitchen towel, John sat in a chair and held Dave in his lap and told Dave the story about the worm and the ladybug. Strange people came into the house and no one remembered about John's dinner but John didn't mind because Dave fell asleep in his arms and that was okay, because John was the big brother and it was his job to protect Dave.

Daddy came in with a big man who said he was a police man, and he let John hold his police badge while the doctor looked closely at Dave. The police man asked John if he had moved anything in the room and John said yes, he moved Dave downstairs because Dave was crying. Then the police man asked John if he touched the gun, and John very indignantly said no, because Daddy had always said that only adults should touch guns, and that John was never to touch any of the guns in the house or in the stables because it wasn't safe.

Then the police man looked at John's hands and his arms and patted his head and said that John was a brave boy, but all John wanted was Dave back.

Even later still, Daddy came back into the kitchen and sat John down and told him that Mommy was dead. The room was still full of people and John thought he heard someone say that Mommy shot herself before someone shushed the voice.

Later that night, lying in a makeshift bed in the servants quarters with Dave asleep in the portable cradle, John stared at the darkness and wondered, if Mommy used the handgun to shoot herself, who had put the handgun on the far table and who had put Dave back into his bassinet.

No one else ever asked those questions, and after a few months and for years to come, John forgot what he was supposed to remember about his mother's death.

* * *

The first time John babysat Torren when it rained on Atlantis, he turned away from the bassinet for just a moment to get something and when he turned back, the lightning through the glass cast shadows like blood spatter on the baby. John had to sit on the ground with his head between his knees and count to a hundred before he could risk lifting Torren out of the cradle with shaking hands to tell him a story about worms and ladybugs and all the wonderful things in the sunshine that a little boy would see.

After Teyla returned with smiles for her little boy, John went back to his quarters and moved the bedside table opposite the door. He placed his loaded sidearm on the table and stared at it as the winter storm buffeted the city.

When John rubbed his hand over his face, he imagined he could feel his mother's blood on his skin.


End file.
